Hartman, David

Hartman, David, 1931–2013, Israeli rabbi and philosopher, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. The son of Hasidim who immigrated to the United States from Israel, he trained as a rabbi at Yeshiva Univ., New York City, and received studied philosophy at Fordham and McGill (Ph.D.) universities. In 1971 he moved to Israel. An Orthodox Jew, he advocated an unusually liberal approach to Judaism and promoted interfaith dialog, founding Jerusalem's Shalom Hartman Institute, a center of Jewish theology and culture, in 1976. A professor at Hebrew Univ. for more than two decades, Hartman also was a prolific author and served as an adviser to various Israeli government leaders.